The hazy white sun flickered in the blue-black sky, and was immediately engulfed in the boundless clouds.

Under the rolling dark clouds, three military SUVs were driving on the Roman road from Bath City to Gloucester City in the drizzle, and on the front of each SUV was a red dragon flag representing "Camelot Castle" to prevent misunderstanding by the Celts.

In fact, the Celts encountered by the convoy along the way were so frightened that they fled as soon as they saw so many steel monsters rumbling and approaching, and even the cattle, sheep and birds they encountered along the way were so frightened that no one dared to come forward to inquire about them.

Even when the convoy passed through a dilapidated village, the Celtic villagers armed with wooden spears and stone axes only hid behind the village fence with a look of shock and fear, staring with bated breath, and no one dared to stop the way of these "steel monsters" without knowing whether they were alive or dead.

What's more, as the cold rain continues to fall, there are fewer and fewer people willing to stay in the wilderness - in this dark Middle Ages, there are never many unlucky people who die from a cold caused by a rain.

At the beginning of November, Britain was already very cold, although there was no snow yet. Getting wet in the autumn rain is no joke.

A bright light streaked across the sky, as if it wanted to tear the sky apart. Then a shocking thunder rumbled, making the glass windows of the off-road vehicle crackle. The waterlogged road surface also became more muddy and difficult to walk, making several people in the car feel pain in their buttocks.

-- Since the Roman Empire abandoned the province of Britain nearly 100 years ago. The road network that the Romans once built on the island of Great Britain has not been properly maintained and has long since been abandoned. It is almost completely covered with dense weeds. Just 40 kilometres from Bath to Gloucester, three SUVs drove for three hours without finishing the road...... In any case, it is always easier to move along the road than to go in the wilderness, at least not to drive the car to some cliff in a daze.

In the back seat of the off-road vehicle at the front, Wang Qiuzheng and Arthur were discussing the Anglo attack, and were deeply surprised by the scale of the troops invested by both sides—not amazed by the number of troops on both sides, of course, but at the small number of troops on both sides. I was deeply shocked.

“…… It's incredible...... This Romulus? Emperor Augustus had only one hundred and fifty legionnaires under his men? Is he Caesar or a centurion? Looking at the approximate troop numbers marked by Arthur on the map, Wang Qiu sighed with a strange face.

-- As far as he knows, even the gangsters in some medium-sized cities in China. There are more than this number of younger brothers.

“…… True, by the time we arrived, the emperor Bixia had only a squadron of Roman soldiers left in his hands, and it was attrition due to the war. This squadron is still not satisfied. Arthur nodded in reply. …… In this squadron, he and his son led a hundred-man detachment, taking turns to garrison and patrol the city—so the emperor Bixia was indeed a centurion. ”

-- According to the Roman legionary establishment, every 8 legionnaires were a squad, also known as the same tent squad, sharing a mule to do miscellaneous work; The 10 squads are called a centurion and have a centurion. Flag bearer (who usually doubles as financial manager), trumpeter and deputy centurion. A hundred-man squad had 80 soldiers; The two centurions are called a squadron, and are commanded by the older of the two centurions; One squadron had 160 soldiers. Three squadrons were called a brigade with 480 soldiers, i.e. 6 centurians; Ten brigades, plus a number of engineers, cavalry, and civilians, formed a Roman legion, which was generally rated at about 6,000 to 8,000 men, because of the number of cavalry and engineering units.

At the height of the Roman Empire, the Roman Emperor had more than thirty legions under his command, but at this moment, Romulus? Emperor Augustus was demoted to squadron leader...... But considering his poor territory now, it is not easy to afford this little off-duty soldier.

Of course, according to the war practice of the ancient Roman Empire, the Roman legions never fought alone - the Roman legions were roughly equivalent to the modern regular field troops, usually only used for the main decisive battles, and as for the daily border defense, law and order, and reconnaissance, they were entrusted to the auxiliary legions.

In general, each Roman legion would have one or two auxiliary legions, which would be drawn together in a mixed battle group of about 20,000 men. And Romulus? Although only one squadron of legionnaires remained under the command of Emperor Augustus, two squadrons of auxiliaries were assembled according to custom, with a total strength of about 500 men - of course, the soldiers of the auxiliary forces were not paid off-duty or paid.

The Emperor's regular army, or Imperial Guard, consisted mainly of followers who had traveled with him throughout Western Europe and Roman remnants throughout Britain. These soldiers who need to be paid on time are the backbone of the battlefield, and they all have quite rich combat experience, which can only be cultivated through long-term off-the-job training, so they are very valuable and their combat effectiveness is also very strong, and each one of them is a great loss, and it is difficult to replenish it in time.

The auxiliaries were less sophisticated, with only some of them being Roman remnants, mostly locally recruited Celts, who needed to bring their own weapons, and some of them could only fight with sharpened sticks. They were also not systematically trained in peacetime, and there were almost no costs other than part of the rations for the expedition and the bounties and booty after the war - which was the norm for miscellaneous cannon fodder units in medieval Europe.

In Wang Qiu's view, such a pitiful military strength is really a bit tragic, but in Europe in the Dark Ages, it can already be called formidable - just to maintain such a small army, the Romulus Emperor's financial income and expenditure are often unbalanced, and he has to be in arrears from time to time.

- At present, the territory that the last emperor can control. Due to the drastic decline in population and land barrenness caused by years of war, it has shrunk to only Gloucester City. There are about 10,000 people in the city of Gloucester, plus villages and monasteries on the outskirts. The total population loyal to the emperor was about 30,000. The inhabitants of the city were engaged in commerce, industry, and transportation, and relied on sea-going ships to trade with Britain, the island of Ireland, and Gaul, while the people of the suburbs needed to cultivate land, grow crops, and fish and hunt to provide the city with food, furs, and meat.

Such a pitiful population is not as good as a relatively prosperous township in modern China. But in this dark age of wars and urban desolation, it was already a rare densely populated place in Western Europe - precisely because of its control of Gloucester City, the only "metropolis" on the island of Great Britain that is currently complete, and the sea and land transportation hub connecting the remnants of the Celtic kingdoms on the west coast of Great Britain. Emperor Romulus was able to become the lord of the whole island with a city of land. And the little commercial tax he received from the maritime trade also gave him at last a metal currency that he could pay - in the rest of Europe, because of the underdevelopment of commercial circulation, the knights lived on fiefdoms rather than on slurs.

But anyway. Given the tragic level of productivity of this era. In particular, poor agriculture yields only about four times the amount sown, and the tax revenue that 30,000 people can provide is extremely limited. Also due to the degradation of civilization and the backwardness of productivity, the price of steel swords and armor became extremely high in this era, and a knight's equipment consisting of armor, helmets, harnesses, spears, swords, and iron gloves could usually be exchanged for a large estate, so it could cost a lot to equip even a small army. And in order to maintain the minimum Roman way of life, the emperor had a lot of daily expenses, especially for some pomp and circumstance. I also had to pinch my nose and burn money on luxury expenses......

- If nothing else, the Roman baths in the city of Gloucester. The annual cost of fuel and plumbing maintenance was enough to be reviled as a luxury by other medieval lords - the baths were a citizen benefit and were generally free of charge.

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On the other hand, the Anglo coalition that invaded Gloucester from the northeast was shabby from a modern point of view - according to the messenger for help, the five Anglo kings had marched together and mobilized most of their tribal warriors, plus the slaves who accompanied them, and had just put together two thousand men! If only the famous "warriors" are counted, it is estimated that there are only two or three hundred.

Wang Qiu pouted and wrenched his fingers, on average, each king seemed to have pulled out four hundred junior brothers, among which there were only a few dozen "red sticks" that could be beaten.

Not to mention anything else, after recruiting the Vampire Hunter Association, there are now as many as two thousand people who Wang Qiu can pull out through the wormhole to fight in Yishijie. This ticket is currently eating and watching naked women in Cleopatra's palace, and after the Yujian Anglobarians are over, as long as they set up AK47s and shoot a few shuttles, they can definitely turn these "Five Nations Alliance" into "Five Nations Horizontal Corps".

“…… At this time, a kingdom in Britain was indeed about the same as a large village in modern times. Arthur scratched his hair and explained to Wang Qiu, "...... Britain has a population of only one million, but there are more than fifty kings at the same time, not counting the hordes of savages who do not obey the orders of any monarch...... On average, one or two thousand subjects per king is considered good, where can there be a large number of troops? ”

- In fact, the Anglo-Saxons of this era still retain the customs of the barbaric era, and the whole tribe is basically a soldier. If the war is fought on the ground, every farmer and hunter who can work is a soldier, and when war comes, they will clear the walls, send their families to forts or estates, and take up arms under the leadership of chiefs and elders to face any invading enemy.

But the problem is that the defense of the homeland is one thing, and the outbound expedition is another. It was about 200 kilometres from Lincolnshire on the east coast, where the Anglo coalition had assembled, to the city of Gloucester on the west coast. At the pace of marching in this era, it would take at least two weeks, or even a month...... Given how long the war lasted and how long it would take to return, what country would allow the country's main labor force to wander out en masse for two or three months? Don't you have to do the work at home? In the meantime, you don't have to worry about other enemies attacking?

Therefore. Unless the entire tribe burned the village and moved en masse, the number of troops that a medieval state could mobilize for the campaign was very limited, and the dry food consumed on the road alone could make people feel overwhelmed. A "kingdom" of 20,000 men. It is not easy to mobilize four or five hundred strong men to go out to rob -- after all, there are many people to keep behind to watch the house -- and the knights, who are the core of combat effectiveness, are even rarer than modern aircraft carriers. The knights under each king's command usually can't even sit in a hall, and it is definitely not a big road that anyone can do.

-- When the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland confronted each other in the future, King Edward III of England found in a count that the number of hoplite knights who could really be mobilized in the whole country at that time did not exceed 500. The rest are all wealthy merchants and manor owners who spent money to buy knightly titles, and they probably don't even have armor at home...... At that time, the population of the entire island of Great Britain was at least five times that of the Dark Ages.

In The Legend of King Arthur. The Knights of the Round Table under King Arthur numbered about one hundred and fifty at their peak. If there was such a king, then he would have to unite most of the provinces of Britannia in order to produce so many knights.

So. Now you often see it from TV and movies. The scene of a large group of heavy cavalry forming a group charging all over the mountains was not easy to happen during the long Middle Ages, and the number of times it actually appeared on the battlefield was very few, and each appearance was a big scene that went down in history. On the contrary, a few knights, a dozen knights fought each other, and it happened everywhere in medieval Europe.

Because the war scenes in medieval Europe are too different from ancient China, where hundreds of thousands of troops went out to fight at every turn, so. In order to help Wang Qiu deepen his understanding of the strength data of medieval European countries, former Prime Minister Kotori Yu Mashiro took on the role of a veteran player of Japan's Sengoku game. Using some of the concepts of Japan's Warring States, which are relatively similar, the military mobilization capabilities of the "kingdoms" of Great Britain in this era were converted.

“…… According to the common situation in Japan's Sengoku period, a fief of 10,000 koku usually had a population of 5,000, so Emperor Romulus was a daimyo of 60,000 koku. The stone height of the rest of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic 'daimyo' generally fluctuated between a few thousand and fifty thousand. Today's most powerful kingdom of Kent is only a territory of 100,000 koku, which is equivalent to half of Oda Nobunaga's founding from Owari Province. The total height of the stone in the whole of Britain is about 2 million stones, which is only one-tenth of the entire territory of Japan during the Warring States period, and not as much as Kyushu Island......"

- Well, the "Carmellot" research station has more than 2,000 serfs, which is barely a small daimyo of 5,000 koku. Wang Qiu thought in his heart.

Although the population of Britain in the Dark Ages was less than one-tenth of that of Japan's Warring States period, the size of Great Britain was almost the same as that of the Japanese archipelago after excluding Ryukyu and Hokkaido. This meant that Britain was extremely densely populated, and after receiving a conscription order from the king, the peasants had to bring their own rations and spears, and travel ten times as far as the Japanese "ashigaru" before they could go to war in neighboring countries...... The amount of physical strength, time, and food expended in the war has increased tenfold, and this battle is really hard enough.

Just as Wang Qiu was thinking about whether to replace the veterinarian's anesthetic bomb in this battle, so as to catch more free lumberjacks, another bright lightning bolt suddenly pierced the gloomy sky, followed by a loud thunderclap, which shook everyone involuntarily. In an instant, there was a fierce wind, lightning and thunder rolled and exploded among the black clouds, mixed with torrential rain rolling in from the sky.

For a moment, it seemed that the whole world had been surrounded by splashing rain, which seemed crazy and violent and cold to the bone.

So, seeing that the sky and the earth were drowsy, the convoy had no way to venture forward in case it was swept away by the flash flood, so it had to find a relatively high solid flat ground and stop and rest temporarily. With nothing to do, most people lean back in their seats and take a nap. Only Japan's strongest superpowered girl, former Prime Minister Kotori Yu Mayo, has a very high vigilance personality, her eyes are round like a cat, and she keeps looking back and forth, saying that she is worried that some particularly shrewd Anglo leader will take advantage of the torrential rain to sneak attack, just like Oda Nobunaga killed Imagawa Yoshimoto in the Battle of Barrel Sama......

In this regard, Wang Qiu said yes, but he muttered secretly in his heart: The wilderness in this rainstorm is about to turn into a swamp, and the war horse can still run?

It was not long before the rain had subsided and the sky was shining again, and the convoy set out again, and soon found traces of the battle: a slain man, lying in the middle of a muddy road, his eyes bulging outward, staring feebly at the sky, and a large hole in his pierced abdomen, from which flowed colorful intestines, stained with dirt and blades of grass, piled up in the grass beneath him......

Then, with the exclamation of the driver, Miss Ma Tong, Wang Qiu and Arthur both vaguely saw the figures fighting fiercely at the end of the road ahead, and heard several vague screams and roars that pierced through the rain curtain.

So, Wang Qiu took a deep breath, touched the body armor on his body, and pulled out a pistol from his waist - the battlefield has arrived! (To be continued......)